BubbleStream

Mike Gagnon

Paper Walls: Removing the Barriers Between You and Making Great Comics

Synopsis

So, you are an aspiring graphic novelist. You are a comic creator with the burning ambition to see your work proudly taking the place it deserves on the front shelves of bookstores. Remove The Barriers Between You And Making Great Comics & Publish Them Without Going Bankrupt! Let acclaimed author and comic creator Mike Gagnon guide you not only on the CREATIVE process for compelling comics, but also on the BUSINESS side of the publishing arena, showing you from inside what it takes to embark on profitable self-publishing of your creative work. Get FIRST-HAND insight into how to manage your creative passion as a business, using current software advances to overcome the bumps and barriers in the publishing arena.

Author Insight

Anyone in the world can self-publish

Let acclaimed author and comic creator Mike Gagnon guide you not only on the CREATIVE process for compelling comics, but also on the BUSINESS side of the publishing arena, showing you from inside what it takes to embark on profitable self-publishing of your creative work.Get FIRST-HAND insight into how to manage your creative passion as a business, using current software advances to overcome the bumps and barriers in the publishing arena

Book Excerpt

Paper Walls: Removing the Barriers Between You and Making Great Comics

The restrictions based on geography, financing, tech knowledge and a host of other variables have all but disappeared in the modern publishing world. In fact, it’s never been easier to self-publish your book than it is now. The first and most important thing is to do the work and get it done. Get your book finished. After that it’s time to get it out to the world and don’t just sit on it at home. There are a few options that you may not have considered or may not be aware of that I’m going to bring to light in this chapter.

Free publishing options

That’s right free. When I say free, I mean free. As in no cost to you to get your book out there and available. You’ve got to get your book out to the world and to your future fans. Even for print format books, there are a number of options that you can use to make your book available for sale or purchase without ever laying down a dime.

Createspace: An Amazon company, Createspace is a print-on-demand publisher that allows you to upload your finished PDF files. After a short review to make sure there’s no spelling mistakes or problems with the print files, you can make your book available and print out a profit without ever spending a dime. The book becomes available online for purchase in the Createspace store as well as on Amazon.com. You can even select the free extended distribution to have it available on other retailer websites such as Barnes and Noble, Book Depository, and Books-A-Million to name a few. You can even set up a page on your website where people can click and buy the book directly from Amazon and guess what? You get a share of every copy that is sold. Amazon will suggest the list price or minimum price that you can set your book at. As I said, you never have to pay a dime. If you want copies for yourself in print, obviously you’ve got to pay for them, but you get them at a significant discount, often $2 to $3 each for a black-and-white book between 80 and 120 pages. That’s just an example; you have to look for yourself to find out more on pricing. Those same books will sell on Amazon for $8.99 on average. So when the book sells on Amazon, Amazon subtracts the basic cost for printing the book from the retail price, then with whatever is left over they will take a percentage for themselves for making the service available. The rest of that retail price will be sent to you as a royalty. This is really a great situation. It’s hard to get across the fact that you really don’t have to actually pay any money to make the book available. It’s something you should look into further and I will cover further on another chapter in this book.

Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP): Another Amazon company, in this case you can publish a digital version of your book, again, for free, and split the sales with Amazon.